


the only proof i need is you

by zeitgeistofnow



Series: cooking as an expression of bato's love [3]
Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: (in the past? i don't know how to tag past death), Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Canonical Character Death, Cooking, Domestic Fluff, Family, M/M, i did cry while writing this i just want to be old and happy, they get to be happy again :')
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-28
Updated: 2020-08-28
Packaged: 2021-03-06 15:08:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,057
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26150908
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zeitgeistofnow/pseuds/zeitgeistofnow
Summary: bato’s getting wrinkles on his hands, lines at his wrist and veins that stand out the same way kanna’s do. he’s sure some of them are from years of washing dishes and forgetting to use the lotion hakoda keeps by the front door, but some of them are just from getting older.he likes it, really, likes the reminder that he’s lived this much of his life in love.
Relationships: Bato/Hakoda (Avatar), Kanna/Yugoda (Avatar)
Series: cooking as an expression of bato's love [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1858732
Comments: 39
Kudos: 95





	the only proof i need is you

The apartment is cool, a light breeze drifting through the thrown-open window and teasing at the ends of Bato’s hair. It smells like exhaust and cherry petals, early spring and the city. He stands at the sink as he slowly washes his hands, relishing the sunlight on his face and water between his fingers. 

“Uncle _Bato,”_ Katara chides, “you’re taking too long. Mommy always said you wash your hands for twenty seconds or they’ll crack. You should really go lotion them now.”

Bato laughs and steps away from the sink, water dripping from his hands onto the tile floor. Sometimes he wonders how much Katara actually remembers her mother telling her and how much is just thinks she’s picked up from books or her Gran Gran and father, but she always says it with such confidence that Bato can imagine Kya crouching in front of a younger Katara and telling her what songs to sing as she washes her hands. He reaches across the small kitchen to the washcloth hanging over the oven handle and gently dries his hands. 

He’s getting wrinkles on them, lines at his wrist and veins that stand out the same way Kanna’s do. He’s sure some of them are from years of washing dishes and forgetting to use the lotion Hakoda keeps by the front door, but some of them are just from getting older. 

He likes it, really, likes the reminder that he’s lived this much of his life in love.

Katara hums _twinkle twinkle little star_ under her breath as she washes her hands and Bato slips his own into the pockets of his khaki’s, watching her. The sunbeams fall along her dark hair like raindrops on leaves after a rain. Kya’s hair looked the same- Bato’s pretty sure Katara uses the same conditioner and shampoo her mother used to. He’s certainly been buying Kya’s shampoo and sometimes when Katara walks by in the morning, hair still damp because she’s scared of the hair dryer, he catches a whiff of Kya.

“All done!” Katara says, turning and flicking her hands at Bato, making water droplets fly into his face. He sputters dramatically and flicks his dry hands back at her. She laughs. “Did you lotion your hands?”

Bato shakes his head. “I don’t want to get any lotion on the vegetables. If you remind me, I’ll put some on after we finish dinner.”

Katara pouts. “After dinner you’re just going to play cribbage with Gran Gran and you won’t want to get up.”

“You can bring the lotion to me,” Bato suggests, and Katara groans. The lotion bottles Hakoda buys are almost as big as her head.

“Fine, you can have your dry old man hands, see if I care.” She turns and looks around Bato at the grocery bag on the counter. They’d gone to the store together and had carefully selected the best tortellini, the best bell peppers, the best onions for their salad. Katara had picked out an extra bell pepper and had eaten it like an apple on the ride home, spilling the tiny seeds into the crack between the bottom of her seat and the back. 

“Ready?” he asks, and she nods eagerly. 

“You promised I get to boss you around this time, just like you boss around daddy, right?”

“Right.” Bato reaches up to the shelf above the stove and picks up the plastic recipe box, holding it in both hands just out of Katara’s reach. “You’re sure you’re big enough to follow the recipe?” He pops open the lid and starts to sort through the recipes, all written in Kya’s neat cursive.

“Yes!” Katara insists, starting to grab at the recipe box.

“You can read all the cursive words?” He pages past all the cookie recipes, recipes Kya memorized when she was a little girl and wrote down for Bato and her kids. _Two cups of sugar, two and a half teaspoons of cream of tartar._ There are melted chocolate stains on the chocolate chip cookie recipe, coffee stains on all the others from Hakoda’s careless hands.

“Yes!”

“Even the _z_ s?” Into the pasta salads now, carefully alphabetized. Tortellini salad is one of the last, the top of the capital _t_ carefully curled into something nearing art. He tugs it out from among the others and shuts the box with a _click._

“Yes!” Katara jumps and snatches the recipe from Bato’s hands, holding it in front of her and starting to trace the words with her pointer finger. “There aren’t any _z_ s in here, besides.”

“Hm, well, you never know.” He starts to seperate the vegetables from the chicken thighs and noodles as Katara finishes reading the recipe. “So, kiddo, what do we need from the fridge?”

“Rice vinegar,” Katara says, pointing at each ingredient on the recipe card as she says them, “mustard, the celery Sokka was making ants on a log with earlier. Then we need syrup and olive oil from the pantry.”

“Do you want me to get those, or should I start the chicken? Or start the noodles?” Bato knows exactly the order these things should be done, and he can almost imagine him, Kya, and Hakoda busying around the kitchen to finish all the parts in time. 

“Shush!” Katara exclaims, squishing her face together and staring at the recipe. She looks carefully at Bato, brown eyes clear and smarter than Bato ever was at her age. “Okay, you can start the chicken, because we’ll want that to be finished before we start anything else, and I can make the dressing and put water to boil for the noodles.”

He ruffles her head. “You’re such a smart kid, Katara.”

“Whatever.” Katara crouches to take a skillet and a pot out of the cabinet. She hands the skillet to Bato and takes the pot over to the sink, obviously teetering under the weight. Bato sets the skillet on one of the front burners and watches her watch the water level of the pot. They’re interrupted by the _slam_ of the front door opening and closing, then the immediate commotion of the last three members of their family coming into the entryway. 

Katara switches off the sink so that nothing overflows and flies through the kitchen to run into her dad’s arms. Hakoda is carrying his messenger bag over his shoulders and wearing a light blue dress shirt, a five o’clock shadow dusting his face. He grins down at his daughter and lifts her up and around in a circle, her legs flying out as she shrieks happily. 

Sokka sneaks around the pair, ducking under Katara’s feet, and high fives Bato as he walks through the kitchen. Kanna comes in a moment later, slowly sitting down at the kitchen table.

“Ugh, my back. Today was far too much excitement for my old bones,” she complains. She’s amassed more wrinkles over the last few years, just as Bato and Hakoda have, and her face droops slightly whenever she’s not smiling. She smiles more than she used to, though, like she realized that someday she won’t be able to smile at all of them anymore. None of them hoard their happiness anymore- there’s no sense saving it for a future that might not come, not when the present is bright and loving. 

“But it was so fun, Gran Gran,” Sokka cheers. “Didn’t you like the aquarium?”

Kanna raises an eyebrow at her grandson. “The aquarium was very nice, Sokka. I really liked all the stairs.”

“Mom ran into an old flame at Sokka’s field trip,” Hakoda says, tossing his messenger bag over the back of the couch and leaning into Bato to nuzzle their faces together. He smells like coffee and cologne, pencil lead and calluses on his fingers when he reaches past Bato’s cutting board to grab the package of Girl Scout cookies sitting on the counter. Bato pokes his hand away.

“We’re eating in half an hour, Koda, you can wait.” He looks over his partner’s shoulder at Kanna. “Who’d you run into?”

“Yugoda,” Kanna says, and the name sounds familiar in a hazy way, like she told him about them years ago. She leans back in her chair, the front two legs hovering a few centimeters above the linoleum floor. “We were never together,” she corrects her son, “but I loved her years ago.”

Suddenly Bato remembers that night, hazy and warm. Kanna had talked to him about a woman over a game of cribbage. It’s incredible how different that night had been, how much difference ten years can make. It’s incredible how many things are the same. 

“Gran Gran had a _girlfriend?_ ” Sokka asks, hopping onto the kitchen counter and swinging his legs wildly. Katara has gone back to filling the noodle pot and the kitchen is full of bright noise. “I didn’t know old people were allowed to be in love.” He’s old enough that that’s obviously not something he really thinks, but he widens his eyes and looks cute enough that everyone but Katara would let it pass and she’s distracted with her noodles. 

“I _didn’t,_ ” Kanna corrects, “and I wasn’t old then, Sokka.” She smiles at her grandson.

Bato offers Hakoda the cutting board with the chicken thighs on it and gestures to the skillet. Hakoda accepts the spot in front of the stove and Bato stretches and sits down next to Kanna. “So, you ran into her…” he gestures vaguely. “Then what? Did you say hi?”

Kanna’s eyes twinkle. “Well…”

“Mom’s got a date on Friday,” Hakoda cheers, waving a spatula in the air. Sokka cheers too. “They’re going to that weird restaurant downtown that serves mashed cauliflower. The one that the kids refuse to step foot in.” Sokka acts through an exaggerated gagging charade and his sister rolls her eyes, finally shutting off the sink.

“You’re exaggerating, Daddy, I think that restaurant is _fine,_ but why would you get a fancy tofu dish for twenty-five dollars when I could just eat soup.”

“Soup!” Sokka cheers. “Are we having soup tonight?’

“Nope!” Katara says, reaching down into the sink to pick up the pot of water. Hakoda makes a quiet _ope!_ noise at the way her arms shake and brushes past her to lift it himself. His biceps flex when he picks it up and when he sets it gently on the stovetop. Hakoda tosses Katara the bag of tortellini with one hand. She catches it easily and Sokka cheers for her again. 

Bato sits back in his chair and smiles at his family, the way they all move like birds in the air, twisting and turning easily around each other. Hakoda catches his eye for just a moment and winks and Bato feels his smile break into something wider. 

He turns back to Kanna and pulls their cribbage board out from a box of games under the table, starting to shuffle the cards. Behind him, he can hear the hum of water boiling and the sizzle of Hakoda starting to brown the chicken, between his hands the _shhhhk_ of cards shuffling. 

“I thought Yugoda was married,” he says, voice low in his throat as he starts to deal. The afternoon sun streams through the windows to land, golden bright, on Kanna. 

“I was married too,” Kanna says. “Things change.”

He looks over at Hakoda and the kids, climbing around each other and the counters in the tiny kitchen- Hakoda and Katara to get to the things they need, Sokka evidently only to cause chaos, glee on his face from the way his father and sister laugh at his antics instead of getting annoyed. They’re all happy. They’re all _his,_ and it still feels like it’s missing Kya, but not in the same insurmountable way it used to. 

“Yeah,” he says finally, voice rasping a little, “things do.” He collects his hand and frowns, selecting a queen and a seven to add to his crib. It’s nothing genius, but they’ve both been playing mediocrely, their skills dulled by weeks of going easy on Sokka and Katara in an effort to teach them the game. “I’m happy for you,” he says.

Kanna smiles kindly. “I hope you know that I’m happy for you too, Bato. I always have been.” She passes a pair of cards into his crib too, then plays her first card. “Nine.”

“Fifteen for two,” Bato says, hopping his peg two points. Kanna’s words are warmer than he thinks she even knows. He knows she loves him, just like she loves her son, just like she loved Kya, but the feeling that she knows everything about his life and that she’s happy about how it ended for him is a sentiment that makes him content in a way he can’t quite articulate.

“Twenty two,” Kanna plays. The crinkle at the corners of her eyes implies that she knows what he’s thinking. “I never would have chosen it to turn out this way, without her… seeing you two alone all those years was like seeing an end table without a leg, but he loves you. You make each other happy, and that’s all I need for either of you.”

“It’s a go,” Bato says, and Kanna plays a five of hearts before taking the point. He takes a pause from the game to reach across the table and take one of her hands. She feels frail and her hands are so much smaller than Bato remembers them being when he and Hakoda were children. “You make us happy too, Kanna. I don’t know where we’d be without you.”

“Oh, hush,” Kanna says. “I’m so glad we found you.” She leans back, taking her hand out of Bato’s to pick up her cards again. “Go on,” she says, “play your turn.”

Bato smiles down at the three cards he has left. “Ah… nine.”

“Eighteen, pair’s two.” Bato moves her peg two spaces, leap-frogging over the last. Hakoda lays a heavy hand on his shoulder a moment later and Bato looks up, already half-smiling. “Hey, babe. Hit a roadblock?”

“Tragically,” Hakoda says, one hand on Bato’s shoulder and the other carding through his hair, smile easy on his face. “We need your veggie-chopping expertise.”

“You mean my manual labor,” Bato half-complains, putting his hand of cards face down on the table and stretching as he stands. “We’ll finish the game after dinner,” he promises Kanna and she shrugs, unbothered. Sokka leaps at the chance to talk to his unoccupied Gran Gran and he pulls out another deck of cards, starting to deal out another game.

The vegetables lined up on the cutting board are vivid reds, oranges, and greens, peppers and celery waiting to be tossed into a salad. Bato holds the knife in one hand and anchors the celery stalks with his other, quietly relishing the _shch shch shch_ of his knife. Next to him, Hakoda carefully flips his chicken thighs out of the skillet and onto a baking sheet that he slides into the oven.

Bato finishes chopping the celery and scrapes it into the big bowl they use for all their salads. When he leans back Hakoda is behind him, solid arms immediately wrapping around Bato. “Hey, handsome,” he murmurs, resting his cheek against the top of Bato’s shoulder blade, eyelashes fluttering against Bato’s skin. “Need me to do anything else for dinner?”

Bato does his best to remember the list of steps on Kya’s recipe card. “Nah,” he says, “unless you want to take over chopping these peppers.” Bato can feel Hakoda twist his face in exaggerated distress and he laughs. “Seriously, all that’s left is this and the dressing, which your daughter insisted on doing herself.”

Hakoda pokes Bato. “Our daughter.” _Our daughter. Our son. Our life._ He’s always been a part of their family, but the pronoun _our_ had always felt like the slightest overstep, a trip in the middle of the sentence to go back to _Kya and Hakoda’s,_ not _our._ It’s a sad kind of irony that it took losing the person who was truly _theirs,_ the other part of their trio, to realize that Bato had never been on the outside.

“Our daughter,” Bato agrees, turning around to look at Hakoda. “You owe me for making dinner and roping your mom into chaperoning Sokka’s field trip, by the way. I’m thinking a candlelit bath.” Bato likes taking baths with Hakoda, even if their tub is small enough that one of them usually ends up sitting on the tile next to it draped in a too-big bathrobe. It’s warm and shrinks the world to just the two of them for an hour. It’s nice not to have to think about anything else.

Hakoda hums. “Sounds nice. We’ll have to dig out the tea lights from me and Kya’s wedding.”

“In the hall closet,” Bato says. “Next to the light bulbs.”

“We own extra light bulbs?” Hakoda shakes his head incredulously. “I’m so lucky to have had you two, otherwise I’d just be sitting in a room with a bunch of burnt out lights, eating unchopped vegetables.” It’s a joke, but Hakoda doesn’t say it like one. Bato doesn’t need to ask who he’s talking about, either. It’s always the same.

“We were lucky to have you too,” Bato says. “You made us lucky, she made us bright.” He doesn’t get choked up when he talks about Kya anymore, just warm. A feeling like her smile, quiet and knowing. 

Hakoda smiles and buries his face in Bato’s chest. “You made us a home,” he says, voice muffled by Bato’s cardigan. 

Bato cards his fingers through Hakoda’s hair and watches Katara carefully stir her tortellini, watches Kanna and Sokka play Gin Rummy. The timer for the pasta will go off in a few minutes and the one for the chicken a few minutes later. Bato will finish chopping his peppers and they’ll pour everything into a big bowl and let Sokka mix it together, let him have the first taste. They’ll all sit at the kitchen table and there will be an empty space where Kya would have sat, but it won’t feel like a hole, just a memory. They’ll laugh and eat food that Bato and Katara made, that Kya wrote, and it will taste like love. 

Bato feels himself smile. “You gave me one to make.”

**Author's Note:**

> \- i know none of the ages REALLY make sense don't @ me. this au got me so confused bc it is not the same as my high school au (like they're in an apartment, kanna still lives with them, a few other things i don't remember off the top of my head) but it is VERY similar so all the timeline stuff confuses me.  
> \- also i'm a fucking idiot and forgot a summary. i always forget SOMETHING so if u got an email abt this with no summary it's my fault not ao3s.  
> \- god when i wrote about bato's hands being wrinkled i did cry a little. i just.. i want to be able to age gracefully and be happy about growing older. it just seems like such a wonderful thing to get to be old with someone you love!!  
> \- bakoda.. it's about growing old together..... it's about loving no matter what and it's about losing something more important to you than anything else but coming out on the other side and still loving... it's about being old and queer.. literally i'm going to cry like through good times and through bad!! it's about loving your best friends. it's about platonic affection even when u want it to be romantic. idk i just. :')  
> \- ALSO hakoda calls kya beautiful as a pet name and bato handsome and when sokka and katara get older they call their s/os handsome/beautiful too because they learned it from their dad. i just think it's a really cute pet name and i LOVE people using the pet names they picked up from their family  
> \- anyway i think this is my last bakoda fic for a while (unless i actually write the young bato & kya & hakoda fic i've been tossing around in my brain bc like.. yearning.. we love to write it) so i needed to get my feelings out in this authors note.  
> \- it feels so nice to finish a series 😔😔  
> \- anyway!! as usual, you can find me on tumblr [@lazypigeon](https://lazypigeon.tumblr.com/)  
> \- i hope u have/had a great day!! if u enjoyed this i'd really appreciate if you left a comment/kudos :D


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